SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia on Thursday marked the 20th anniversary of a mass shooting which led to strict gun controls that have in turn led to a huge decline in gun murders, undermining claims in the United States that such curbs are not the answer.

The chances of being murdered by a gun in Australia plunged to 0.15 per 100,000 people in 2014 from 0.54 per 100,000 people in 1996, a decline of 72 percent, a Reuters analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed.

In 1996, Australia had 311 murders, of which 98 were with guns. In 2014, with the population up from about 18 million to 23 million, Australia had 238 murders, of which 35 were with guns.

It was the April 28, 1996, shooting deaths by a lone gunman of 35 people in and around a cafe at a historic former prison colony in Tasmania that prompted the government to buy back or confiscate a million firearms and make it harder to buy new ones.

The country has had no mass shootings since.

The figures directly contradict assertions of most leading U.S. presidential candidates who have either questioned the need to toughen gun laws or directly denounced Australia’s laws as dangerous.

Guns that have just had their barrels crushed in Sydney are stacked after they were handed over on the last day of the Australian gun buy-back scheme, September 30.

In a January 2015 tweet, Republican front runner Donald Trump wrote “Fact – the tighter the gun laws, the more violence. The criminals will always have guns”. A year later, Republican hopeful Ted Cruz blamed Australia’s gun laws on a rise in sexual assault.